In some document scanning operations a large number of loose documents are scanned to record the documents electronically, and then the original documents are stored. It is often imperative that the original documents are maintained in their original order. For example in a program to handle documentation for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, all U.S. tax returns and associated documents will be processed, scanned and stored within IRS Service Centers. Individual taxpayer submissions are prepared for scanning by removing all paper fasteners, such as staples, paper clips, rubber bands, etc., at a document preparation area and are moved to the scanner for scanning. The documents must be moved to the scanner in such a manner that they are not lost, reshuffled or dropped.
The documents to be scanned are often of various sizes, thicknesses and states of disrepair. Many document scanners, such as the Kodak IMAGELINK Scanner 900 or 923, feed documents from a stack of documents that are aligned along a common edge. In the document handling process prior to scanning it is therefore required to establish a "common edge" for the documents to be grasped by the front feed rollers of the scanner's paper transport mechanism. In addition, for the IMAGELINK 900 and 923 Scanners, only a stack of documents whose height does not exceed 1.5 inches (3.75 cm) can be reliably fed in the scanner.
After the documents are scanned, it is necessary that all of the documents are collected and retrieved from the scanner in the order in which they were scanned, and moved to a document storage area. No documents can be misplaced or lost during the movement from the scanner to the document storage area. The existing output tray of the Kodak IMAGELINK Scanner 900/923 does not offer the degree of document security that is desirable in an operation such as (income tax file scanning). The documents can get out of sequence and smaller sized documents can fall out of the tray and become misplaced. In addition, to conserve valuable storage space, it is desirable that the means of storing the documents not take up unnecessary storage space.